Azerbaijan began talks with ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh on Thursday after the breakaway region was forced into a surrender that stoked calls for the resignation in Armenia of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
Photographs sent to Reuters showed officials from both sides seated at a small round table in the Azerbaijani city of Yevlakh.
The Karabakh authorities accused Azerbaijani forces of violating the ceasefire and advised residents to stay indoors. Azerbaijan's rapid victory represented the culmination of decades of struggle to regain control of Karabakh, whose ethnic Armenian population broke away in a major war in the 1990s that coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
But thousands nevertheless massed at Stepanakert's airport, while others took shelter with Russian peacekeepers.Azerbaijan's victory is yet another twist to the tumultuous history of mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh, which over the centuries has come under the sway of Persians, Turks, Russians, Ottomans and Soviets, and where Armenians and Azeris have been in conflict for more than a century.
Azerbaijan and Armenia both claimed the territory after the fall of the Russian Empire in 1917 and since the Soviet Union crumbled they have fought two wars over it.
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